Global Governance

Ayelet Shaked is a relative new­comer to Israeli politics. Shaked, 40, served as Benjamin Netanyahu’s office manager before breaking with the prime minister and joining Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party in 2012 and then winning election to the Knesset in 2013. Following the 2015 election, Shaked was named Israel’s minister of justice.

I do not believe that foreigners contribute usefully by issuing strong opinions about how a country’s citizens, or those of a larger unit like the European Union, should decide when faced with an important political choice. Our insights, based on international experience, may sometimes be helpful; but there should never be any confusion about the asymmetry of roles.

The world is transfixed by Britain’s referendum Thursday over whether to stay in the European Union. Some of the most interested and anxious spectators of the “Brexit” debate are in the Baltic republics, where I recently spent a week meeting with political and military leaders as part of a delegation from the Jamestown Foundation.

In this article, Cohen discusses the preparations in advance of the UNCLOS tribunal’s ruling by parties and non-parties in the South China Sea disputes including China, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the United States.

For the first time since the start of Britain’s referendum fight over Europe, the polls predict “Brexit.” The four most recent national surveys put the “Leave” side ahead with margins of between one and 10 percentage points. Most people, including many disaffected Britons who want to shake up the system by backing a Brexit, understand that this would mean a political and economic shock. But they underestimate its severity.

“British citizens will be voting on June 23 on a question that will affect not just the future of Europe, but also the future of the United States, argues CFR President Richard N. Haass in the American Interest.”

An isolationist bent to British politics, what Sebastian Mallaby refers to as “little Englandism,” is not new to the British political tradition. While this perspective has long been counter-balanced by a Gladstonian internationalism, debates around Brexit have been conspicuously devoid of such idealism, speaking in a language that appeals only to pocketbooks rather than to common decency.

While globalization has intensified the need for global cooperation, the current global order is fraying. New forms of competition are making international cooperation more difficult and will continue to do so. The sixth Princeton workshop on global governance convened scholars and former policymakers to examine the state of global governance and consider how to correct its shortcomings.

China’s leadership of the Group of Twenty (G20) in 2016 comes at a moment when the role of the G20 itself is being challenged. CFR's Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and the Asia Global Institute convened a workshop in Hong Kong to assess the agenda facing the G20, why the group had fallen short of expectations in recent years, and whether China’s leadership in 2016 provides an opportunity for renewal.

Laurie Garrett writes that the organization responsible for international public health is increasing its budget by millions of dollars — but its plan for coming up with the cash to help battle epidemics like Zika isn’t grounded in reality.

South Asia is in the midst of a geopolitical transformation wrought by several simultaneous developments: China’s rise, India’s rise, and attempts by the United States to recalibrate its own strategy to address new power dynamics across the arc of Asia from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. CFR's Asia program convened a symposium to discuss the new geopolitics of southern Asia.

"In some ways, the pre-Sykes-Picot Middle East is coming back – but without the order imposed by the Ottoman Empire," writes CFR President Richard N. Haass. "And if no basis for a new regional order emerges, the Middle East stands to suffer far worse in the next century than it did in the last."

Laurie Garrett provides an in-depth analysis of the upcoming election of the next director-general of the World Health Organization and its detrimental impact on the future of global health leadership.

Japan hosts the G7 summit at a time of rising strategic tensions in Asia and worrisome global economic trends, but for many the gathering will be sidelined by a U.S. presidential visit to Hiroshima, writes CFR's Sheila Smith.

2015 Annual Report

Learn more about CFR’s mission and its work over the past year in the 2015 Annual Report. The Annual Report spotlights new initiatives, high-profile events, and authoritative scholarship from CFR experts, and includes a message from CFR President Richard N. Haass.Read and download »